write me a tragedy in gold
by xshedreamsinredx
Summary: Stefan/Elena. Post 5x21. "I'm dead." He tells her because maybe she has forgotten.


**Pairing:** Ghost!Stefan/Elena  
**Fandom:** TVD  
**Warning:** All around weird structure, kinda erratic, don't ask. On an unrelated note what the fuck was Season 5?  
**Author's Note:** Set after 5x21. Basically leave all logic behind and enter. Consider the whole oblivion and Bonnie Bennett as the anchor plot null and void.

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**write me a tragedy in gold**

_"I'm scared you will realize  
__I'm just bones and questions and leave me for something solid."_

.

.

.

There is a dead boy in her room.

He stands in front of her mirror and waits for an image that will never form. His fingers thrum across the embossed side of her vanity, and avoid the crumpled photograph stuck haphazardly in the recess of the wooden framing.

"You're dead." She tells him because he is the one good with waiting and she is the one weighed down by the reminder.

His lips snags over his teeth in an ugly grin, he laughs like she has said something funny. "So are you."

.

.

.

She finds him writing sometimes on the wall inside the crack of her closet, scribbling names in a practised Victorian hand against the peel of paint.

The names are not those of his victims this time, they belong to her, the people who loved her and died loving her because her face is not her face alone, it was worn by women before her and would have been worn by women after her had she not grown fangs and become the monster in her own fairytale.

_Caroline Forbes, Bonnie Bennet, Tyler Lockwood..._

The list gets longer and longer but the minutes don't stop.

His recounting runs free of chronology, he punctuates where it would hurt less and leaves spaces where it would hurt more.

"Do you plan to add your name to it as well?" She asks because she can. These days she knows how to draw blood with the mere fall of words off the tip of her tongue.

"You didn't kill me." He says despite himself, not entirely unkind.

"I didn't die for you, Elena. I was protecting Caroline, it had nothing to do with you."

The press of his consonants hits her a little harder than she expects and, it shouldn't because she is in love with his brother, and he is dead and- and it's just so, so stupid it makes something in her chest hurt.

"Whatever." She says because she doesn't have anything else to which, in retrospect, is as fitting as it is redundant.

.

.

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Most times, he looks at her like he doesn't see her at all, like he doesn't want to see her at all, and it scares her more than the thought of dying ever did. Because he was the only one who could look beyond the thousand years old face she wore and see the person she was underneath and maybe he can no longer see her for the person she used to be. Maybe he sees Katherine when he looks at her. Maybe-

But then he is there, kneeling in front of her, taking care to not touch her, to never touch her. This is that one line he will never cross. It is what makes him so different from his brother. "You're eighteen, Elena," he reminds her too often, too soon, "they don't ask you to catalogue your feelings at this age."

"I know what I feel." And she is angry all of a sudden because really? He always does this, makes her feel young and stupid at the exact moment she doesn't want to. "I _love_ Damon."

"I know." He gives her a wry smile, the shade of his eyes darker somehow. He never quite looks so sad as he does every time she declares her love for his brother. She only wishes that she didn't feel the need to it so often.

.

.

.

It leaves a bitter aftertaste in her mouth, the times he mentions women other than her in his life.

"I loved Katherine." He tells her with his eyes closed and mouth open and she can almost imagine the worship in his eyes, the piety of his love, the rustle of her weight on his sheets. "_God,_ I loved her."

She bites on the inside of her mouth to draw blood. "Loved," she stresses on the word. "Past perfect," punctuates it with a dramatic roll of brown eyes, "how utterly boring."

She has never cared much for the thrill of it, but please, _please,_ he doesn't have to know.

"I think I could love Caroline." He says instead.

There is a stifling flare of indignation that burns through the crisscross wires in her chest, and she can't help but harbour resentment for Caroline. "It can't possibly be love if you have to think."

"That's a relief."

She can't quite grasp the implication of it all, can't quite remember the inside and out of the language he is written in. "Why?"

He looks at her squarely like he can't decide if it would be an all too easy a task for him to wrap his hands round her throat and kill her or if it would be an all too easy a task for him to wrap his hands round her throat, tug her close and kiss her.

"I _think_ I love you." He says.

But he sounds uncertain.

It would have been an affirmation if it wasn't already an admission.

.

.

.

One day, she returns to her room to find herself alone. The spot near the fireplace where he likes to linger lies abandoned and the books in her shelf rest unplucked and it seems like he didn't even exist in the first place.

_She doesn't need him_, she thinks, remembers snippets of all the times he wasn't there when she needed him, all the times he was there when she didn't.

His words poetry in her ears-

_"This is a future memory."_

The press of his palm on her spine-

_"You have me."_

The feel of his fingers tangled in her hair-

_"Stop staring."_

_She doesn't need him,_ she prays.

She has not prayed in years, has long since forgotten the last time she went to the church for anything other than a wake.

"No," she sobs, presses clenched fists to her eyes until she is a coiled bundle in the corner of her room. No, no, no, _god,_ no.

_I don't-_

_I can't-_

_I always lose him._

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.

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He eventually comes back like he always does, pulled apart and bloodied.

"How many times will you make me say goodbye before you finally start to mean it?" She asks, tired.

There are days he hollows her out without even trying. There are days she's eighteen and feels much too old.

"I'm dead." He tells her because maybe she has forgotten. He no longer has fate lines embedded on the surface of his hands.

She laughs like he has said something funny. "So am I."

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.

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"You didn't even mourn me." He forces the words out of his mouth, avoids looking at her. She doesn't really mind. These days, she avoids looking at herself in the mirror too. "You burnt your house down and cried for your clothes but you didn't-," the words hang across the distance between them. "You didn't." _Not for me._

She opens her mouth and shuts it again when no words form.

_I think I love you._

"I don't think I love you anymore." This is how you make the meaning. You take two things and try to define the space between them. "You," his lips twist into something grim, "have changed."

She is surprised to note that his words, empty of any real malice, still manage to burn through her like the sizzle of vervain on skin.

"No, I have not." She looks away, tries to swallow the sting. She doesn't know if she says it for his benefit or her own. "You just - I couldn't poss- I - I have not." She finishes lamely, looks up to find herself alone.

He is no cleric but that might as well have been her confession.

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**fin.**

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**End Notes: **Thank you so much for reading, I hope you enjoyed it half as much as I enjoyed writing it. I'd really appreciate it if you could take a few seconds out of your precious time and leave me a review, tell me whether you liked it or hated it.


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